


we built this city (on rock and roll)

by ellesmer_joe3



Series: Time and Space in the Big Blue Box [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, implied whouffaldi, this is me still looking for closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 03:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20090839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellesmer_joe3/pseuds/ellesmer_joe3
Summary: The Doctor decides to get on with things—but not before making one last trip in her memory. Takes place sometime before Demons of the Punjab, when Thirteen is alone.





	we built this city (on rock and roll)

The Doctor gazes at the grooves and corners of the TARDIS, each of them familiar yet brand new in their own right. He stares down at his hands… _She now,_ the Doctor muses, _and Her_, although the subject of gender never did carry much weight to the Time Lords. Nothing wrong with being given an entirely new set of sexual organs, but it was a shame that she still wasn’t ginger. Oh, the mischief she could have gotten into as a female ginger.

A memory comes to mind, that of a petite schoolteacher teasing him—as the Doctor had been a male at the time—that silver was a much better color for a Time Lord. “Show your age, why don’t you,” she’d said.

The Doctor glances at the TARDIS doors and smiles softly, remembering.

“Fancy a little detour, old girl?”

Soft chirps erupt from the console. The Doctor inputs the coordinates to a tiny forest planet located in the outer limits of the Escaler Galaxy, her fingers moving over the buttons as if she’d never lost her memory of the place, as well as of the woman who’d made their last trip there so special.

The wild strains of the Kansas song “Carry on My Wayward Son” greet her when she exits the TARDIS. Locals come down from their houses in the trees, most likely having heard the cloister bells; they gather around her, suitably confused by her appearance. Once she whips out her sonic screwdriver and it begins emitting the light buzzing sound that had so enchanted them before, however, they begin pulling on her coat, eager to show her the new wonders they have made.

And they are wonderful. The Doctor almost forgets that the planet had been nothing but ruins once, so ravaged by war that the locals could no longer rely on their folk melodies to stir the trees into building them new homes. That was how Clara and the Doctor found them.

“How can we help them, Doctor?” Clara asked; all wide eyes and pursed lips. What she really meant was, “We’re not leaving until we help them, Doctor.”

The Doctor had never been able to deny her anything, anyway.

Ultimately, they didn’t need to stay for long. All it took was accidentally leaving the TARDIS doors open just a crack, just enough for the Doctor’s music to escape out into the forest. Upon witnessing the subsequent chaos outside, the Doctor turned towards his dumbstruck companion and explained with a slow, satisfied grin, “The power of rock and roll, Miss Oswald.”

The trees had been roused into compliance by the furious and passionate singing of Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody”. As the forest began the arduous task of rebuilding the war-torn village, the Doctor understood. The locals weren’t the only ones to have been disturbed by the passing war, the surrounding environment had been as well, and it was angry and in pain, and there was no better music suited for that than rock.

As the Doctor looks at the tree houses and the flowing creek, one of the locals tugs at her pants leg and warbles, “Clara is not with you?”

“Ah, I’m afraid not.”

It nods sagely and pulls its appendage away. “And you were not with her.”

The Doctor frowns, even as hope flickers in her chest. “What do you mean?”

Wordlessly, the local bounds across the creek and very nearly disappears behind the thick foliage. The Doctor hastily follows. As she does, she notices the flowers blooming on either side of the trail. It is clear they’d been planted there. Recognitions dawns on her as soon as they step out into a small clearing, where the flowers continue around and around, spiraling inwards. At the center of everything is a large statue, the wood molded to show her previous regeneration leaning against the TARDIS, with Clara Oswald on the other side.

“The forest created this when you left,” says the local. “It holds you and Clara in high esteem.”

The Doctor’s appreciative gaze catches on something that’s been carved into the TARDIS, just beside Clara’s head. It’s only two short lines, and she does not know whether to laugh or to sob when she reads it.

_Do not stand at my grave and cry,_

_I am not there; I did not die._

“Mary Elizabeth Frye,” the Doctor whispers, recognizing the text. “Well done, Miss Oswald.” She settles for laughing because, if Clara were here, all the Doctor would receive was a smack on the head should she shed even a single tear in this clearing, which was a place of honor and celebration.

Ruefully she tilts her head up to the sky, a smile of awe on her face. Her Clara had wandered before facing the raven; perhaps she still was. Perhaps out of the trillions of stars and planets in the sky, Clara was in one of them. The Doctor would never find her again, of course, but just knowing was enough.

Her impossible girl, living life even after death.

After asking permission from the forest as well as the locals, the Doctor carves her own little quotation into the TARDIS replica with the hope that if Clara ever returns to this little planet they had once saved, the words would bring a smile to her face and she would remember.

Once the Doctor is finished, she returns the sharp tool to the local, says her goodbyes, and leaves the planet.

In her wake the locals crowd the large statue, chattering among themselves regarding to the new carving from the Doctor. They cannot understand the words—the English alphabet never reached their planet, after all—but to a more learned individual, the writing would allude to the words of a priest from London in the 1800's, and it would say:

_One brief moment and all will be as it was before._

_How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!_

**Author's Note:**

> The priest from London is Henry Scott-Holland. This piece is of course named after the Starship masterpiece of a song.


End file.
